Anthrosource

Cultural Anthropology

Volume 21. Issue 2. May 2006 (Pages 234 - 264)

Of Children and Jinn: An Inquiry into an Unexpected Friendship during Uncertain Times:

Naveeda Khan

Sectarianism in Pakistan, specifically the Shi'iSunni conflict, already analytically challenging, has taken on further complexity of late. Within this landscape of ambiguity, I argue that everyday life is a necessary frame for understanding the reach and scope of sectarianism in Pakistan. This article shows how the dynamic of Shi'iSunni conflict becomes reprised within divides among Sunnis as a standing archive of stereotypes and slights. At the same time, we capture something of the trancelike quality of everyday life in the tensions embedded within familial relations that animate religious differences in unanticipated ways. Finally, through a focus on the efforts of a single pious self to speak the normative within this landscape, I show how these differences come to be internal to being.